There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.

Pain and disease awaken us to convictions which are necessary to our moral condition.

With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.

Affectation is to be always distinguished from hypocrisy as being the art of counterfeiting those qualities, which we might with innocence and safety, be known to want. Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy; affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly.

Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.

Composition is for the most part an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation.